EM · Procedural & diagnostic ED skills

Point-of-care ultrasound: aortic, lung and cardiac (the RUSH protocol)

Also known as POCUS · Point-of-care ultrasound · Bedside ultrasound · RUSH protocol · Rapid Ultrasound in Shock · Lung ultrasound · Focused cardiac ultrasound

Bedside point-of-care ultrasound of the aorta, the lung and the heart for the critically ill patient — the aortic measurement (the abdominal aortic aneurysm is an outer-to-outer aortic diameter over 3 cm), the lung patterns (the B-lines for pulmonary oedema, the A-lines for the normal lung or COPD, the absent lung sliding and the lung point for pneumothorax), the cardiac windows (the pericardial effusion, the eyeball left-ventricular function, the right-ventricular dilatation of pulmonary embolism) and the inferior-vena-cava collapsibility for the volume status. Integrated by the RUSH protocol (Rapid Ultrasound in Shock), which maps the pump, the tank and the pipes to answer the shock question at the bedside. ACEM-primary, globally tagged.